1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an outdoor unit of an air conditioner, more specifically, to an outdoor unit of an air conditioner in which a blower chamber is disposed above a machine chamber having a heat exchanger and a compressor.
2. Description of Related Art
As one air conditioner, there is a multi-type air conditioner in which a plurality of indoor units are connected to one outdoor unit. For example, as described in Japanese Patent No. 4894299, an outdoor unit of a multi-type air conditioner includes a vertically rectangular parallelepiped housing provided with a rectangular base plate, a pair of side plates vertically disposed and fixed to both left and right ends of the base plate, a front plate vertically disposed and fixed to a front end of the bottom plate, a rear plate vertically disposed and fixed to a rear end of the base plate, and a top plate closing a top surface.
In this type of an outdoor unit, an interior of the housing is partitioned into a machine chamber having a heat exchanger and a compressor at a lower portion and a blower chamber having a blower at an upper portion, with a plane including a front beam and a rear beam as a boundary, and the blower is supported by the front beam and the rear beam in the blower chamber.
An air blowing port of the blower is disposed on a top surface of the housing, and an interior of the machine chamber becomes a negative pressure space as the blower rotates, and air passed through the heat exchanger from an outer circumference of the housing and entered the machine chamber passes through the blower chamber and is discharged from the upper portion of the housing to the outside of the housing. Therefore, heat exchange between the air and the refrigerant is performed.
In addition, as an example of an outdoor unit of a higher output multi-type air conditioner, there is an outdoor unit in which a large heat exchanger and two blowers are incorporated in a housing. In order to incorporate the two blowers in the housing, the outdoor unit has the housing with a horizontally elongated rectangular parallelepiped shape, and two blowers are disposed side by side in a right and left between a front beam and a rear beam in an interior thereof (for example, refer to Japanese Patent No. 2000-240983).
However, when the housing is designed to have a horizontally elongated shape and two blowers are attached side by side between the front beam and the rear beam, a large bending moment may be applied to a center of the front beam and the rear beam, and thus there is a possibility of being distorted or bent.
If the front beam and the rear beam are distorted or bent, it is not preferable because there is a possibility of hindering the assembly of panels and the like. Therefore, it is desirable to increase mechanical strength by increasing the number of beam members and supports or the plate thickness for reinforcement, but it cannot avoid an increase in the cost related to this reinforcement.